John Klar: Escalating gang trafficking in Vermont

U.S. Customs and Border Protection

Gang members are flooding Vermont with fentanyl and heroin while our police are condemned as racists. It will get worse until truth and justice are restored.

As progressives push to “decarcerate” Vermont, opioid deaths increase. Residents may have noticed steady reports of out-of-state fentanyl and heroin dealers being apprehended in Vermont, often associated with well-organized and extremely violent inner city gangs who also traffic in guns, sex workers (including children), and anything else that makes a profit. Progressives eclipse the real crisis of a steady influx of society’s most dangerous and malicious capitalists — drug gangs and related cartels.

As WCAX recently reported:

Federal authorities say Dajuan Williams, 28, of Detroit, was the leader of a drug trafficking organization that reached Vermont. They say Williams, along with Mohamed Luhizo, 23; Jaylinn Lenoir, 22; Stephen Alexander, 31; Rendell Perkins, 21; Jessica Elwell, 30; Juwon Robinson, 26; and another defendant who remains a fugitive, are charged with conspiracy to distribute controlled substances and many of them also face money laundering charges. … This all happened between September 2019 and November 2020 in Vermont, North Dakota, and elsewhere.

Dajuan has previously made Vermont headlines, after stabbing a man in St. Albans then fleeing to Maine. He was also apprehended in New Hampshire in 2018 with heroin, stolen credit cards, and $32,000 in cash, and sentenced to two-to-four years in jail. His return to the community (in his recent arrest as kingpin) has been less than “restorative.” Others in his group also have a Vermont history: Juwan Robinson was arrested in Burlington in 2020, and Dajuan was arrested back in 2012 in Winooski with 2 ounces of crack cocaine and a 2-year-old in the car. It’s a good thing the feds arrested him, or Chittenden County State’s Attorney Sarah George likely would have already released him with a scolding and a free coupon to stay in a Vermont hotel.

It is evident that the allure of easy profits coupled with mild penalties has attracted Dajuan to return to Vermont again and again. (It doesn’t hurt that Burlington has made a huge push to defund its police; crime rates immediately escalated). These same attractive policies draw other gang activity, thriving during COVID. Vermont’s progressives worry more about racial profiling than victims of fentanyl — perhaps if the Mafia was distributing drugs they would howl at any pullovers of Italians. But then, Italians not dealing drugs would be allowed on their way. … And they are “fat old white men.”

Burlington is becoming a less pleasant place to reside or visit:

The crime rate in Burlington is considerably higher than the national average across all communities in America from the largest to the smallest. … Relative to Vermont, Burlington has a crime rate that is higher than 96% of the state’s cities and towns of all sizes. … Importantly, when you compare Burlington to other communities of similar population, then Burlington crime rate (violent and property crimes combined) is quite a bit higher than average.

The issue of drug dealing is not racist — white motorcycle gangs also deal heroin, as do clans of white Vermont criminals (as a recent bust in St Johnsbury reveals). Yet Vermont’s Black Lives Matter ideological stupor has blindly reduced drug interdiction to a race issue. In defunding the police, many leftists demanded even more police budget cuts than granted, condemning police viciously. As reported in Seven Days, one histrionic Burlingtonian chirped to the city council: “This takes courage. It takes leadership. We can lead Vermont. We can lead this country. Get fired f–ing up right now.”

Burlington is leading the country into an ignorant stupor. Crime rates will continue to escalate. Graffiti has exploded in the last year, costing businesses huge sums for cleanup while undermining downtown shopping. Homelessness continues to increase in Burlington. White Vermonters are faulted as racists, even if those homeless got off the bus from Detroit last week.

Dajuan Williams didn’t just get off the bus in Vermont — he is very familiar with the lucrative business that thrives in Vermont’s black market, even as Gov. Phil Scott and his progressive entourage destroy established businesses with unconstitutional, capricious business restrictions. If only hotel owners could do business as freely as gang members.

That’s the problem with false ideological narratives such as “Vermont is systemically racist” or “Vermont police are all racist” — they don’t match up with reality. The reality of drug trafficking, deaths from overdose, and related violence will continue to intrude on these idiotic mantras of the left. The slanderous attack on Vermont and its culture will be exposed as crime rates escalate and reality restores reason to Burlington and its oblivious mayor.

The more progressives seek to pretend the gangs are not there, the more incongruous their positions appear in the real world. But the gangs will keep coming — the flow will increase. Rutland was alerted to gang activity in the 1990s, and has been fighting a gang presence ever since. (There was a drug-related killing there this month. State officials let the killer go home, but the feds have stepped in and saved us, yet again.)

In 2008 it was noted that:

Suburbs in the Northeast offer gangs potential advantages: less intense competition from urban rivals and fewer local police “gang units” focused solely on frustrating their efforts. The gangs still benefit from relatively easy interstate highway access to major drug routes and population centers.

In 2010 the Vermont Times Argus took note of this reality:

They’re not flying their colors or fighting for turf, but urban gangs with familiar names like the Bloods, Crips and Latin Kings are active in Vermont and have been for years. They’re drawn to Vermont by the lure of easy profits in the drug trade, according to police, and many gang members end up staying as inmates in Vermont jails. … One of the most recent gang arrests in Rutland involved a 21-year-old man from Brooklyn, N.Y., named Genghis A. Khan who was charged with selling and possessing crack cocaine in the city.

By 2014 this activity by gangs, escalating with the opioid scourge, was obvious. A Burlington Free Pressarticle noted:

As illicit drugs have trickled into Vermont in past decades, so have gangs. There is no comparison to the nation’s larger cities, those in law enforcement say, but communities across the state regularly experience activity related to organized crime. … Federal laws have made a difference in the past two decades, local police chiefs say, but more needs  be done, including the creation of state gang laws.

In 2015, Vermont witnessed the “Brooklyn bust,” in which two Brooklyn, NY defendants were:

allegedly at the center of a case that extends from 2012 to March of this year. Prosecutors describe the two as being the “leaders of a significant drug trafficking organization” that operated in Vermont, Maine and New York. … The case provides a window into two troubling trends in the drug crisis in the Northeast: The rise in popularity of fentanyl and the extent to which criminal gangs from New York run operations in Vermont using a local network of drug users and other accomplices, often women. … In addition to the drug dealing, Cargo and Delima are charged with trafficking women for prostitution — including a minor — and money laundering.

That year, Vermont officials stated that gang activity was at “an all-time high” and increasing.

Then Vermont saw a Bronx gang bust in Burlington in 2016:

It was the biggest gang bust in the history of the Bronx. And it’s hitting home for the Burlington police. … Chief Brandon del Pozo released a statement on Friday that said, in part: “To think that gangs from the Bronx victimize opiate and crack addicts directly to our south and east, but not here in Vermont, is naive,” wrote del Pozo. “The same roads and highways that brought them there also bring them here, every day, and the same profit margins exist. This gang operation typifies what we see here in Burlington.” … Eighty-four members of different New York City gangs were indicted for trafficking heroin and crack cocaine as far north as Manchester, New Hampshire.

More clear evidence of gang-related trafficking continues to arise (especially trading drugs for guns, which progressives then leverage as justification to enact yet more gun restrictions against native Vermonters). In 2018, Vermont police detained “Weezy” and “Sunshine,” two nice-sounding Latin Kings gangmembers who do not-so-nice things:

In a statement, U.S. Attorney for Vermont Christina Nolan said, “Darwin Medina was one of two leaders of a conspiracy to pour dangerous drugs into Franklin County. Their actions invited destruction in two communities. The citizens of Vermont suffered the consequences of the drugs they brought in, while the defendants took money and guns back to Boston to further gang activities there.”

Just to round out the calendar, in 2019 there was an interdiction of 10,000 bags of fentanyl-laced heroin, from Holyoke, Mass, assisted by the FBI’s Western Massachusetts Gang Task Force. And in February, the feds arrested a self-declared Massachusetts gang member in Brattleboro.

Vermont has resisted creating a gang task force, perhaps in fear of histrionic howls of derision from deluded far-left whackos who prefer to expose the citizenry to the worst criminal element on our continent in the name of “social equity.” This silly lark of “social justice that creates victims and injustice” is tiresome enough without exposing young Vermonters (of any color) to risk of death: opioid overdoses have risen sharply during COVID.

It is time to allow factual reality into this “race” conversation. VTDigger and others indignantly proclaim that Vermont police use force more often with black defendants — are these reporters aware of the honor culture of gangs, and that resisting police, or assaulting them, gains respect, prestige, and honor in the gangs and on the street? Is it possiblethat an increased gang presence in Burlington has contributed to those statistics, or to the spike in graffiti (gangs are known for “tagging” through graffiti? These are merely logical questions regarding causation.

If gang activity were the actual causeof increased physical conflict with police, arrests of BIPOC fentanyl dealers, drug deaths, or graffiti, how would an ideologically-compromised media with a pre-written social justice script even fathomthat reality, until it bit them in the face? It will bite us all. Vermont is suffering from a race crisis — the ideologically perverted progressive push to slander Vermont police as racist, Vermont farmers as having used sharecropping laws to oust black Vermont farmers, and alleged genocide against “Native Peoples.”

The “native people” of Vermont are living here now, being scolded by colonizing thugs who pave the way for urban gangs and cheap drugs, to rape pillage and plunder the clueless and naive. And if Dajuan and his BIPOC Detroit associates are incarcerated in Vermont, their race will then be used to allege Vermont’s police and justice system are racist — as proved by the increase in black inmates.

I grew up in violent, impoverished inner city areas — something Vermont does not historically have, but is furiously constructing in Burlington, Rutland, Bennington and Newport. I guess something has to fill the corrupt hole left by the EB-5 program: mentally ill progressives and the gangland thugs they pander to are rushing to fill the void.

Of course, gang members are flooding Vermont with fentanyl and heroin while our police are condemned as racists. It will get worse until truth and justice are restored through the rule of constitutional law.

John Klar is an attorney and farmer residing in Brookfield, and the former pastor of the First Congregational Church of Westfield. © Copyright True North Reports 2021. All rights reserved.

Image courtesy of U.S. Customs and Border Protection

18 thoughts on “John Klar: Escalating gang trafficking in Vermont

  1. WCAX, WPTZ, WDEV – all biased, all bought and paid for lamestream propaganda machines. WDEV used to report real local news. However, they have a contract with CBS…it’s all the same stories, same propaganda, same all around. Real news is independent creators on the internet…only place to find the Truth – anyone removed off Twitter and YouTube – find their alternate channels. Censored and taken down by big tech means Truth more times than not

  2. I quit watching WCAX . Too much Fake BS news. Real news is s slanted to fit their narrative.

    • Ain’t that the truth.. stopped watching WCAX long ago because my blood pressure became a problem. There really is nowhere to go for unbiased news anymore. Very sad!

  3. The most welcoming sign for gang activity in Vermont is our red carpet of white guilt. It manifests itself as an aversion to law enforcement, both in policing and in the courts and corrections. The overdose numbers are staggering over the last year and you dont hear much about those numbers in the left wing Vermont media since it messes with their ideological narrative. Those leftists most concerned about opioid deaths are often the biggest proponents of defunding police. They ought to think long and hard about “abolishing” public servants who often are the first on the scene of a junkie in the throes of an overdose, ready to Narcan them back from the abyss. Amid the cases of alleged police abuse, I would like to see numbers publicized on how many overdose deaths were prevented specifically by peace officers both in Vermont and nationally. Also missing from the headlines are all other cases where police put their own lives at risk to save others, whether from criminal activity or pulling someone from a burning car, house fire or flood.

    • There are also innocent families stuck in a disaster living with these drug addicts, there are also elderly parents stuck with and adult addict as well.
      The family is literally robbed right into deep poverty by the drug addict to buy the drugs.
      How does the woman take the kids and leave when she doesn’t have a dime?
      This is a crisis we don’t hear near enough about either.

  4. It’s a beautiful thing! Montpeculiar rolls out the Welcome Wagon. This qualifies under Vermont’s “DIVERSITY IN DRUG DEALING” initiative which is designed to promote underprivileged minority entrepreneurship. Vermont Legislature has found that such programs have the added benefit of stimulating and enhancing the law making process.

  5. Just another reason for having 7 guns in my gun case and one in my holster.. I’ll bet Vermont gun owners are way more proficient with our firearms than the typical thugs from “the hood”

  6. Tell me it’s not so, big-city thugs peddling their wears here in Vermont again, how come we
    never get to see the mug shots, just names & ages ??

    I would like to see these outstanding citizens that are probable from NY, MA, CT as I see
    the BMW’s blackened windows, out of state plates, I don’t think they are up hear going to
    school, but Vermont is getting an education……………………………..wake up !!

    • You point out something I didn’t mention — WCAX appears to exclude mug shots when the alleged felons are black. I guess this is a sort of “whitewashing” by naive white people who have the privilege to expunge their guilt by hiding journalistic truths. Note also there hasn’t been a left-wing article on gang activity in Vermont for years — it doesn’t fit the fantasy narrative. It will get bad enough that they can’t ignore reality anymore. Which is it’s own tragedy, and the real point of the piece….

      • WCAX used to be the last privately owned major network affiliate in the US until the son of it’s founder sold out to a big media corporation. It was the go-to source for excellent news and political reporting in Vermont and now it’s just another cog in the woke, politically-correct McNews machine propagating the left-wing narrative blather…what a shame and what a loss for Vermont.

        • I second that emotion. WCAX is a shell of its former self and the website stinks ! The so called news articles are merely summaries of old knowledge.

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